


there is no beat no melody

by consumptive_sphinx



Series: that i should rise and you should not [5]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Animal Death, Crazy traumatized people doing their best, Feelings and opinions about destiny, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26887096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: “It’s late to still be awake.” There’s nothing in the King’s tone that Mordred can clearly identify as a trap, nothing at all save vague concern, but nonetheless his shoulders go stiff and he shifts on his feet, ready to move.“Or very early,” he says, although in fact it’s true that he hasn’t slept and he’s positive it shows.--Arthur and Mordred understand each other, and fail to understand each other, respectively.
Relationships: Arthur Pendragon & Mordred (Arthurian), Kay & Arthur Pendragon (Arthurian), Mordred & Agravaine (Arthurian)
Series: that i should rise and you should not [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890229
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	there is no beat no melody

Before the sword, before Merlin, before Camelot, before any of it, when Arthur was a child and still wandering Ector’s grounds with his brother, he’d found a fox caught in a trap in the snow.

“Don’t get so close,” Kay had told him, “it’ll bite.”

Arthur ignored him. The snow was red around the fox’s leg. Arthur reached out to try to undo the trap and —  _ “ow!” _ — pulled away, his hand bleeding.

“I told you,” said Kay, entirely unsympathetic.

“I was just trying to help,” said Arthur, still staring. The fox thrashed and continued to bleed.

Kay had sighed and pulled Arthur to his feet by the shoulder. “Well, it doesn’t know that,” he said, in a long-suffering tone that he would never really grow out of.

Then he’d softened, which he would grow out of, and quickly at that. “It’s not about you, Art. It’s just trapped. C’mon, it’s getting late.”

\--

At night Mordred goes barefoot so he can walk as quietly as possible, though he isn’t a child anymore and here in Camelot there is little need. Old habits die hard, and the silence is a comfort well worth the chill.

Tonight is unseasonably cold for so late in April, and the stone floors suck the heat from Mordred’s skin and the chill soaks into him like rainwater, but it’s quiet. He’s alone. There’s nobody watching, no eyes to see, and the silence is so clear that he can hear his own heartbeat.

And Mordred can avoid both the ever-present dreams of drowning and the knowledge that he should have Agravaine beside him and does not — that Agravaine is not asleep in their room, that he does not have his brother's sharp laughter and sharper sword beside him, that he will not hear Agravaine laugh at anything ever again — or at least he can try to, for a time.

Mordred is alone and nobody is watching him, and with nothing to mark the passage of minutes or hours, time seems to stand frozen still.

He is alone, and then he passes by an open door and — suddenly — is not.

“Sir Mordred,” says the King. Mordred is abruptly aware of how he must look, barefoot in his shirtsleeves with his hair loose and uncombed, standing in the shadows that paint in stark clarity just how hollow his face has become since Agravaine’s death.

“My lord King,” he says. Speaking openly — making any sound at all — feels wrong, wrong, wrong.

“It’s late to still be awake.” There’s nothing in the King’s tone that Mordred can clearly identify as a trap, nothing at all save vague concern, but nonetheless his shoulders go stiff and he shifts on his feet, ready to move.

“Or very early,” he says, although in fact it’s true that he hasn’t slept and he’s positive it shows.

The King frowns but doesn’t press the point. “We leave for France in a week,” he says instead.

“Mm.”

“You and Gawain will have your war with Lancelot.” There’s something in the King’s tone but Mordred can’t tell what it is. He is so, so tired of talk of war.

Mordred has made his choice; he knows what he wants. He swore to Agravaine that he would take down Arthur, swore justice for all those Camelot left to die for its salvation. This is good news. Agravaine died for — he cuts off that thought before it can begin.

“Gawain will have his war, you mean,” Mordred says without thinking, and then “— I’m sorry, my lord King,” when he catches himself.

“You don’t need to be,” says the King, surprisingly gentle. “I meant only that they were your brothers too.”

(Mordred has made his choice. He knows what he wants. He wants the King dead and this rotten court destroyed. He swore to Agravaine who he will never see again that he would do it, swore to him he’d see this through, and Agravaine died accusing Lancelot and Mordred  _ promised, _ they both swore they’d stand by each other — this isn’t — he chose —)

“Oh,” Mordred says, instead of any of that.

It feels like he should have more to say than just ‘oh.’ He doesn’t, though. And he can’t tell what the King wants from him.

“You’re cold,” the King says abruptly, moves so they’re standing next to each other and wraps his cloak around them both, and Mordred freezes up, too stunned to answer.

\--

When Mordred first came to Camelot, there had been rumors aplenty about the Queen of Orkney’s youngest son, born too late to be Lot’s child but easily embraced by brothers too old to have known him well. If Mordred heard any of them, he acknowledged none.

“He looks like his mother,” Bedivere had said of him, carefully neutral, over a half-finished chess game with only Arthur there to hear.

Strictly speaking Arthur couldn’t disagree — Mordred did look like Morgause, had her too-bright eyes and her sharp features and her narrow build. Not much of Arthur in that face at all, which came as something of a relief.

Arthur’s overwhelming impression, though, was of a nervous slip of a boy, flinching at sudden noises and only ever sitting down when he could be assured that his back was to the wall. There was nothing of Morgause there, or at least not the Morgause that Arthur had known.

“He looks more like a trapped animal than like my sister,” Arthur had said to Bedivere, and the topic was shut.

\--

They stay there for — a long time. Several minutes at least pass in silence. Mordred can hear his heartbeat jackrabbit-quick in his throat; the King can surely feel it in his chest.

Then he takes a breath, steels himself, and does something very, very stupid.

“You should kill me,” he says quietly into the King’s shoulder. “It would be the sensible thing. I don’t understand why you don’t.”

Arthur pulls him closer, puts one hand between Mordred’s shoulderblades and the other on the back of Mordred’s head. If Mordred closed his eyes — well, no, even if he closed his eyes it couldn’t be Agravaine, Agravaine’s shoulders were sharper and every embrace of his was so tight it made Mordred’s ribs ache, but Arthur is just as warm.

“Is it so hard to believe that I don’t want you dead?”

This is patently ridiculous but Mordred can’t find it in himself to laugh. “I dream of drowning nearly every night.”  _ You’ve known from the day I was born that I would kill you someday,  _ he doesn’t say, is nonetheless sure that Arthur knows he’s thinking it. _ Why try to fight fate once and then just — stop? _

Arthur goes very, very still. For a brief moment the only thought in Mordred’s head is  _ please make it quick. _

But whatever he was expecting doesn’t come. The sword doesn’t fall. Arthur only draws him closer still. Mordred isn’t cold and yet he’s still shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, voice very soft. “— I’m sorry. I should have apologized to you years ago.”

“I don’t understand,” Mordred says, and then a moment later realizes that he’s spoken out loud.

Arthur doesn’t let go. Mordred’s not sure whether he was expecting him to. “You don’t have to forgive me,” Arthur says, which only makes Mordred understand less. “But I am sorry. I — was young, I had been at war for years, I was scared and trapped and —  _ nobody is better when they’re trapped _ — and I have worked my whole life to build a world where fewer people would be trapped, and  _ none _ of that means you have to forgive me. I’m sorry.”

Here in the early morning, barefoot and wrapped in his father’s cloak, Mordred feels very young and very small and strangely numb, like something between his skin and his mind has gone dead. He still doesn’t understand but he nods and tucks himself into Arthur’s shoulder, which is solid and warm.

_ I’m sorry,  _ he doesn’t manage to make his lips say.  _ I’m so sorry, _ and he isn’t sure if he’s talking to Arthur or Agravaine or God or all three.

\--

“I don’t want to just leave it,” Arthur had said to Kay, all those years ago.

Kay closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose — Kay did that, when he wanted to look like he was annoyed — and said, in the long-suffering tone of an older brother who had not asked for the responsibility of looking after a seven year old and did not especially want it, “We have to. It’s  _ late. _ And if you get frostbite I’ll get whipped.”

Arthur didn’t answer, just stared blankly at the glinting steel trap, at the reddened snow. The fox snarled at him and struggled ineffectually.

Kay sighed and said, “Look, we can come back tomorrow if you really want.” That wasn’t in fact what Arthur wanted but if he reached out again Kay really  _ wouldn’t _ soften when he got bit so he nodded and stood, and they left the fox there, in its trap in the snow.

When Arthur came back the next morning, dragging a grumbling Kay along with him, the fox had frozen to death in the night.


End file.
